


Sunlight

by etothey



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy and Angel investigate two vampires at another high school; Angel explains what sunlight means and doesn't mean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunlight

"You're kidding," Angel said in that absolutely deadpan way of his.

"Nope," Buffy said, pushing her sunglasses up on her nose. This whole business of very dirty windows on her car was unfortunate, but the alternative had been to take the Viper, and Buffy's morals told her that that car, with its necro-tempered windows, could have come from nowhere good. And even if Angel had still had the Plymouth, a topic on which he was particularly close-mouthed, there was something plain stupid about a vampire driving around in a convertible. "That one--both of them. The guy in the football jersey and the other guy in the leather jacket just lurking there."

"There's no way they can be vampires," Angel said. He tapped remindingly on the windowglass. "Buffy, they're standing in stark daylight. I would be a little pile of cinders in about two seconds if I went out there."

Buffy looked at him sidelong. "Which is how you made that epic dash for the sea in stark daylight to get at the vampire Spike hired to torture you."

He blinked. "You weren't there for that."

"No," Buffy said, "but Oz told me about it." She shrugged. "Anyway, they're vampires. Don't tell me you can't sense it, too."

She thought he was going to deny it--Angel could be awfully stubborn--but his mouth tightened, and he nodded. "The Ring of Amarra," he said, sounding vexed. "Did they reforge it somehow? But the whole point of rare, powerful, ancient magic artifacts is that you can't just duplicate them in a factory! Otherwise we'd be awash in rare, powerful, ancient magic artifacts."

"Yeah, and we used to see apocalypses about every other week. Your point?" When that didn't get a reaction, Buffy said, "The other thing I don't get is, why football uniform? I mean, when you were skulking around Sunnydale, you never dressed up as a football player."

"I didn't know you had a thing for football players."

Buffy started to say, "You've never seen me cheerlead," then stopped. Given Angel's penchant for stalking people, there was no way to be sure of that.

"Besides," and he was looking at her with a peculiar half-smile, "it's perfectly obvious to _me_ what they're after. Both of them."

"What, now you're a mind-reader?" But she knew what he was going to say. With their history, it was impossible not to know.

Angel said it anyway, to acknowledge the truth that still festered between them. "A girl. They're rivals over a girl. I don't suppose--"

"No slayers here," Buffy said. "Believe me, I checked. No potentials, either. Which is funny--if there's a history of vampires here, you'd think someone would have activated."

"How do you want to proceed?"

She looked at him consideringly. It was hard to remember sometimes that he had led his own crew in Los Angeles. Here he deferred to her, the way he had deferred to her (more or less) in Sunnydale. But sometimes she wondered--"Do you have thinky thoughts?"

"You're the Slayer, Buffy," Angel said. "And, like I said, it's daytime. I can't do anything to them from here."

He was hiding something. "You miss walking in the sunlight," she said: not a difficult guess. The two vampires outside were busy conversing, too far away for her to hear. She didn't mind killing a little time this way.

Angel was silent for a while. Then he said, "It's not that exactly. I sold out a lot of people for that privilege."

"You always feel guilty after the fact," Buffy noted. It was hard not to sound accusing. _We should be too old for this,_ she thought. Absurd as it was, she sometimes felt older than Angel.

"I wonder what they've done with their unlives," Angel said, squinting as if that would reduce the opacity of the glass.

"Let's find out," Buffy said. "I mean, you have bad luck with friends and I have _terrible_ luck with dates." She reached for her purse and touched up her lipstick.

He had the good taste to look appalled. "You're going to _hit_ on them?"

"Just one at a time," she said. "What do you take me for?" Then, because the line was irresistible: "You think I'm too old for them?"

Angel gave her a pained look. "I doubt they're high school age." He realized his blunder and added gamely, "You don't look a day over--"

"Save it." She leaned over and impulsively kissed him on the nose, knowing better than to try anything more. They weren't together, they weren't dating, they were just on a mission together. Like old times, except minus the sweaty palms and the stalking and the French homework. Okay, not that she had ever asked Angel for help with that last.

Buffy let Angel scoot back against the other door, then headed out into the sunlight. She whistled, not very tunefully, as she approached Skulking Guy. She would have preferred to try Football Guy first, but a dark-haired teenage girl was approaching him. Buffy ached when she saw the girl's open smile. _Was I ever that young?_ she thought.

"Hey there," Buffy said to Skulking Guy. All her senses were politely knocking on the door and asking her to go for her stake, but for some reason she didn't think she was in danger, not yet. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "This a private alley?"

Skulking Guy raised an eyebrow. He looked her directly in the eyes, mostly, except for a fraction of a second when his gaze dipped. He'd meant her to see that, and she knew it, too. "Not at all," he said. "I haven't seen you around here. Are you a student here?"

Flatterer. Buffy paused a little, then said, "I dropped out a little while back."

"Oh, please," Skulking Guy said, his voice still genial. "We may not have a Hellmouth around here, but even I recognize one of the greatest Slayers in the last hundred generations."

She blinked, but didn't go for her stake. Not until she knew what was up with the walking around sunlight violating all laws of vampire-hood thing. For all she knew, that ring on his hand really was a duplicate of the Ring of Amarra, and staking wouldn't work anyway. "You're that old?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Skulking Guy said, now sounding mock-injured. "And you can tell your friend in the car to come out."

"Sorry," Buffy said insincerely, "but he'll stay where he is. So if you're vampire number one, who's number two?"

To her surprise, Skulking Guy snorted. "That's my brother, Stefan Salvatore."

"You're being awfully helpful."

He grinned. "Of course I am. My brother, for whatever reason, insists on drinking animals' blood and moping and brooding. If you want to do something about him, please, be my guest. Maybe having a Slayer gunning for him will finally get him out of his funk."

 _Brooding?_ Buffy eyed him and tried to decide if he was kidding her. "Excuse me," she said. "I have to consult my friend in the car. Who can't come out because, uh, he's really shy."

"Sweetheart," Skulking Guy said, "we're natural enemies. Strictly speaking, you don't have to apologize to me."

"Yeah," Buffy said, "but I have a lot of snarky dialogue to atone for. The karmic wheel turns and all that." With all the dignity she could muster, which wasn't very, she returned to the car.

"Well?" Angel asked.

"My bat-sense tells me it's the ring," she said, "but the weird thing is Football Player is supposedly a good vampire."

"There's no such thing as a good vampire," Angel said wearily. "Just a vampire who hasn't yet gone bad."

"Yes," Buffy said, as if providing incontrovertible proof, "but Football Player _broods_ about it. Sorry, Stefan Salvatore."

"We don't know anything about--did you say Salvatore?" He was frowning.

"Also," Buffy said, "the hitting on failed. Not, I will note, because I wasn't hot enough--"

"That was never in question."

She blinked innocently.

Angel muttered something under his breath.

"--but because he knew who I was."

"Salvatore," Angel said. Then his eyes narrowed. "The guy you talked to must be his brother, then."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I know who sired them," Angel said. "Katherine. Darla despised her. Actually, Darla despised a lot of people. We tried to destroy Katherine and her get several times, but never had any luck." The set of his mouth was bleak. "Besides, there was always havoc to be wreaked wherever we went. The problem with being an immortal chaos-wreaking sociopath is that you're spoilt for choice."

Buffy grimaced. "I never looked at the problem in quite that light. Thanks so much for enlightening me."

"You have to understand what you fight," he said. "So do we go after Stefan first, or his brother Damon?"

"I don't know if we go after Stefan yet," Buffy said. "I mean, he sounds like he's not doing any harm."

"You're taking the word of a vampire for this. We don't know who's actually been doing the killing in this town."

"He's _brooding_ ," Buffy pointed out again. "And he could have a soul."

Angel said, "There's no way to test for that in the field."

Buffy sighed. "Where's Will when I need her? But, I mean, he could be like you. Or like Spike."

"Or he could be putting on an act to get close to the brunette girl out there," Angel said.

"Were you putting on an act?" she said pointedly.

"You know I wasn't."

Buffy made a moue. "Sorry. That wasn't fair."

"You never asked," Angel said after a while.

"Never asked what?"

"What I did with the real Ring of Amarra."

"I assume someone destroyed it." He had mentioned that earlier, hadn't he?

"I did," Angel said.

Buffy stared at him. His head was bowed, his fingers laced tightly together and white at the knuckles. "Why?"

"I had a theory at the time," Angel said, "and you're going to laugh, but the theory was that walking in sunlight represented redemption. That it was something I had to earn."

"Sunlight isn't a gold star that the teacher puts on your chart," Buffy said, as kindly as she knew how. Even if she thought it had been a stupid move.

Angel said, "I know that now. It's only sunlight."

"I think we've done enough recon for one day," Buffy said when it became clear he wasn't going to add anything more. Besides, Football Player was walking away from the brunette girl now, and Skulking Guy had vanished the way Angel used to. She could try to trail the brunette everywhere, but she'd be noticed, and the vampires might pick other targets. She needed a better plan.

Come the night, she and Angel could figure out what to do about the Salvatore brothers. Pay them a call or something.

"So if sunlight isn't redemption," Buffy said as she drove them back to the motel, "what is?"

Curiously, Angel's face relaxed, or as much as it ever did. "Working with you," he said. "Working with people doing the right thing. Since that's something I've never been good at doing by myself."

Someday she would ask him about what exactly had gone down when Wolfram and Hart fell. Someday, but not today. She reached over with her right hand; he squeezed it in return.


End file.
